7 June 2018 (Countercurrents) – Suresh Oraon (27) of Purnadih Chatra Jharkhand was shot dead this morning. Suresh and his people were the owners of the land on which the state owned Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) built their Purnadih coal mines. Suresh kept fighting CCL and their mafia against land grabbing. When CCL bulldozed the […]
By Rosamaria Loures, Sue Branford, and Maurício Torres 31 May 2018 (Mongabay) – “The gold mining in our territory is bringing a lot of illness, a lot of malaria. It’s bringing alcohol into our communities. It’s bringing drugs into our territory,” said Maria Leusa, a Munduruku female warrior and a leading member of the Ipereg […]
By Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Edwina Gibbs 2 June 2018 (Reuters) – Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has told a U.N human rights expert who said the country’s judicial independence was under threat to “go to hell”, warning against interference in domestic affairs. The Philippine Supreme Court voted last month to remove Chief Justice Maria […]
30 May 2018 (James Cook University) – With palm oil production exploding around the world, a new study of a leading producer has found ways to make the process easier on the environment.James Cook University PhD candidate Lain Pardo studied the industry in Colombia – a country described as being on the “tip of the […]
22 May 2018 (UN News) – In a hard-hitting speech marking the 25th anniversary of the World Conference on Human Rights that underscored the “universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated” nature of human rights, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said that a quarter century on, the world seemed instead to be […]
21 May 2018 (UNODC) – In 2017, opium cultivation in Afghanistan reached a record high with an estimated 328,000 hectares, up 63 per cent compared with 201,000 hectares in 2016.According to the latest survey report released today by UNODC, last year’s record levels of production has led to unprecedented levels of potential heroin production. From […]
By Luke Darby 25 May 2018 (GQ) – The Trump administration called immigrant children future criminals on the same day Border Patrol was accused of sexually and physically abusing child detainees.In April of 2017, when Donald Trump ordered his first missile strike in Syria, the president said that he was moved by the images of […]
By Michael Greshko 10 May 2018 (National Geographic) – Many of the world’s amphibians are staring down an existential threat: an ancient skin-eating fungus that can wipe out entire forests’ worth of frogs in a flash.This ecological super-villain, the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, has driven more than 200 amphibian species to extinction or near-extinction—radically rewiring […]
By Robin Pogrebin 23 April 2018 (The New York Times) – The prominent Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei has long used his fame and social media as a megaphone for his activism. It was because of his blogging and Twitter activity criticizing the government that he was detained by the Chinese police for nearly […]
25 April 2018 (RSF) – The 2018 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), reflects growing animosity towards journalists. Hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders, and the efforts of authoritarian regimes to export their vision of journalism pose a threat to democracies. [Читать на русском / Read in Russian] […]